


All Our New Years

by Frayach



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Minor Character Death, New Year's Eve, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 04:36:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frayach/pseuds/Frayach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes too many New Year's Eves without each other but eventually they get it right.</p><p> <img/></p>
            </blockquote>





	All Our New Years

**Author's Note:**

> The [LJ version](http://frayach.livejournal.com/21939.html).

The first New Year's Eve he could remember he was in his cupboard. The neighbours were there along with people from his uncle’s job. There’d been thirty paper cups set out on the countertop with exactly four inches between them. He knew because his aunt had given him a ruler and made him set them up. They were three-quarters filled with red punch. He drank one when his aunt wasn’t looking. It had a strange taste, and he spat it back into the cup and returned it to its place. Later, he wondered who’d chosen it. He hoped it was Dudley.

 

The first New Year's Eve he could remember the house elves burned the pudding. It smelled like wet ash, and his mother declared she’d never get the smell out of her hair, no matter how many perfume charms she showered over her head. Her wand had rained sparkles on her, on him, and on the goblets of punch. He’d sneezed, and no one was there to tease him. He couldn’t tell if this was a relief or not. Later, small and undetected, he slipped out of the ballroom and kicked the elves who’d burned the pudding. It made him feel better.

 

The first New Year's Eve he spent at Hogwarts it snowed. Hedwig loved it. Ron had a book on chess, and he didn’t look up when he opened the window. He wasn’t lonely, but he wasn’t not lonely either. Not with the mirror full of people who might’ve loved him if they’d lived. Not for the first time, he felt he had one foot on one side of an invisible line and the other on the other side. It was getting difficult to tell which side was which, and he liked it that way. Love was the best kind of magic. 

 

The first New Year's Eve he spent while on break from school he felt like a man. His father invited him to his library where he entertained wizards wearing velvet with blackthorn wands tucked in their sleeves. He caught glimpses of them in the firelight along with silver amulets bearing strange runes and scars on their hands and arms in equally strange patterns, too deliberate to be accidental. One wizard had a scar that crossed his lips at an angle, cheekbone to chin. It disappeared under his collar. They poured him a dram of scotch. It burned all the way down.

 

The first New Year's Eve after Voldemort returned he felt sick with responsibility. The next day and all the days after it seemed soaked with the sour wine of fear. It weighed him down, pulling him beneath the surface of strained cheer. Sirius caught his eye, and for a moment he could do it, he could do anything. Grimmuald Place was ugly but the fire was warm. The bread melted the butter, no matter how much he slathered on it. Outside the wind howled. It was a voice speaking to him alone. For one more night, he chose to ignore it. 

 

The first New Year's Eve after the Dark Lord returned he felt like a little boy. His father shut him out of his confidence, his face a slammed door. His mother coddled him and cried a lot. It was not glamorous. Not at all like he thought it would be. The windows remained dark, and the fairy lights remained in their trunks. They ate their goose cold as though warming it would render them weak. They had to be strong. They had to learn to go without like soldiers. Like prophets. But he felt like neither and doubted he ever would.

 

The first New Year's Eve without the Weasleys he felt nothing but cold. Hermione cried all night, and he could not comfort her. He didn’t know how and suspected he never did and never would. Snow drifted around the tent poles. He held his shattered wand on his knees and tried not to think how it symbolised everything. Ron gone. Dumbledore’s myth in shards. Hermione’s heart broken. He could find no words and suspected none had ever been coined that could express his despair. People did not survive this kind of thing, and if they did, they never spoke of it.

 

The first New Year's Eve he spent in the ruined manor he vomited for so long that there was nothing left but a thin bile. The Dark Lord forced him to pluck the eyeballs from the sockets of a living man. Without magic. Horribly, the man did not die. He did plead though. And scream and scream and scream. A deep gutter had been carved into the floor of the dungeons. That night it overflowed with fresh blood. Tomorrow it would be coated with a stinking black sludge. Somebody would have to clean it. This too would be done without magic.

 

The first New Year's Eve after the War he asked Ginny to marry him. They’d had sex for the first time on Christmas Eve, and he was giddy with the ease of bodies together under musty blankets, cradled in the dip of an old mattress. This was what the rest of his life should be like, worn and comfortable as an old jumper. He’d never known fearlessness. First there’d been the darkness of his cupboard and then the darkness of an undoable task. Now there was fire and candlelight and Ginny’s flame-coloured hair. He couldn’t imagine ever regretting anything ever again.

 

The first New Year's Eve after the War he watched his father slowly die. Lucius was sentenced to death, but mercifully (or so the Ministry thought), he’d been given a potion that took a month to kill. They’d sent him home to his tired wife, his damaged son. There were few good-byes to say and too much time to say them in. Things that should have remained unspoken were said. On the stroke of midnight, Lucius closed his eyes and said, “Actually, _let_ the old friends be forgotten.” His wife and son did not know if he was referring to them.

 

The first New Year's Eve away from the three young children, he saw Malfoy for the first time since the War ended. They were at the same party, and Malfoy bumped into him – accidentally as it turned out. It was not as awkward as he might’ve imagined. Malfoy was married to a former classmate and not some Drumstrang witch. He had a son. They talked for a few minutes about professional Quidditch and avoided jobs. Malfoy, as far as Harry knew, was unemployable. He wondered how he got by. He wondered if he was happy. He wondered why he even cared.

 

The first New Year's Eve after he’d slept with a man for the first time, he saw Potter in Diagon Alley. It was bitterly cold, and Potter had children in tow. They nodded at each other, and Potter asked him if he was going to the same party with the same people as last year. He said yes, he would see Potter there later. Potter looked tired. There’d be no way he’d make it to midnight. He found himself wanting to say something about it – suggest a potion perhaps – but Potter had never liked taking advice. Least of all from him.

 

The first New Year's Eve after his youngest child left for Hogwarts, Ginny told him she wanted a divorce. It wasn’t unexpected, and he merely nodded. That eve was as good a time as any. Who wanted to say that he’d spent half the year a cuckolded husband and the other half a lonely divorcee? A clean break, she said. It made him think of a bone and of Malfoy. His wrist as he’d handed him the piece of parchment was bone white beneath the sleeve of his black robes. The parchment was still in his pocket, all these months later. 

 

The first New Year's Eve after Astoria died, he drank himself into a stupor. Potter kept refilling his glass and finding increasingly ridiculous things to toast. The new flower pots at the Ministry shaped like bowler hats in memory of Fudge. The fact that the Leaky had finally hired someone to mop the loos. And worst of all, George and Ron’s newly patented Receding Hairline Raspberry Ruffles, which didn’t help you grow hair but rather turned the hair that you still had pink. The colour was high in Potter’s cheeks, and his glasses kept slipping down the bridge of his nose.

 

The first New Year's Eve he’d decided to skip that bloody boring party, he took Malfoy to dinner and insisted on paying. It was kind of a date but not really. They were nothing more than friends despite the fact that watching Malfoy swallow his wine made Harry jealous of beverages in general. It was ridiculous. Malfoy’s admission that he was gay had simply put silly thoughts in his head. He was straight. At least he thought he was. Malfoy’s grey eyes kept flicking away from his face to the clock. When it struck twelve, he raised his glass and winked. 

 

The first New Year's Eve after he’d admitted to himself that he was in love with Potter, he resolved never to let it show. Potter had become his closest friend, his “mate” as common people liked to call it. So what if Potter’s hair was so black it made his teeth hurt with longing. So what if Potter’s chewed chapped lips were all he could look at as they said, over and over again, to all the stupid people at the gala, “Happy New Year to you, too.” Only he knew that Potter couldn’t wait to escape. Only he knew why.

 

The first New Year's Eve after he’d been named Head Auror, Malfoy finally kissed him. It was awkward and not-at-all-sexy and he loved every minute. Malfoy kissed as wetly as Cho but without the tears. There was a lot of spit, his or Malfoy’s, he couldn’t be sure. At one point, he’d had to pull away to wipe his chin on his sleeve before lunging back to catch Malfoy’s mouth with his own. Malfoy tasted like syrupy sweet punch and cheap vodka, and his nose was cold from standing outside for so long. Above them, fireworks rained down embers and ash.

 

The first New Year's Eve that Potter spent the night, he couldn’t sleep a wink. Potter snored like a dragon and he had to keep casting _Silencio_ at him. He tried to pretend that it bothered him, but it didn’t. Potter was close and warm, and the clock ticked in a new decade. How Potter could sleep at all with his hand combing covetously through Potter’s hair before slipping down the length of his back and cupping the swell of his buttocks, he had no idea. Perhaps it was a skill he’d acquired during the war. He cast another whispered _Silencio_

 

The first New Year's Eve after Malfoy told him that maybe they should just be friends, he punched out a window in Hogsmeade featuring magically animated mannequins lifting glasses of punch and kissing as confetti dropped from a sky spelled full of stars. He’d cut himself and couldn’t heal it because he was drunk. He ended up at St. Mungo’s with his hand wrapped in his formal robes. When Malfoy came he embarrassed himself by swallowing back tears. Malfoy asked him why, and he couldn’t answer. The words stuck in his throat. Malfoy looked tired and sad. It was a consolation.

 

The first New Year's Eve alone without Potter (even last year’s had been spent in hospital), he made his second ever resolution. It was broad, ambitious and almost certainly unkeepable, but he was nonetheless determined to stop being stupid and proud. Yes, Potter had never actually said it, but he knew that Potter loved him. There’d been that time with the Tattlebat’s mucus. How’d he manage to get it? And then there was the daisy – silly and romantic and almost crushed to a pulp in his sweaty fist. Potter had clearly been clutching it all day, waiting for the right moment.

 

The first New Year's Eve after he and Malfoy got back together, he let Malfoy top for the first time. It hurt, and he hadn’t come as Malfoy almost always did, but it nonetheless felt right, and Malfoy had shuddered and shuddered. He vowed to try again after midnight. A new year was a good time to get over the last of his “but I’m not really gay” hang-ups. The second time, Malfoy was less frantic to be inside him and more able to soothe and cajole and stroke him to a long sweet climax. It was much easier after that. 

 

The first New Year's Eve after he sold the manor, he watched Potter open his trousers and bury his face in his pubic hair. It was a prelude to a blow-job, but he was content to wait. Midnight was still half an hour away and there was more than enough time to squeeze a final orgasm out of the waning year. Through the bay window in their new flat, he watched the gaslights cast wavering orange pools on to the surface of the river. Frost licked at the glass, and Potter licked a path from his navel back to his cock.

 

The first New Year's Eve after they were bonded, Malfoy lay with his head in his lap, took his hand and kissed his palm. The last of the children had finished Hogwarts, and they’d all been by earlier in the evening for a glass (or three) of Malfoy’s wicked punch. Potion masters should definitely not be allowed to make beverages, especially of the inebriating variety. His gold ring caught the light, and Malfoy traced it with a lazy finger. He was still often startled to happiness by the fact that it was his hand that wore it and not somebody else’s.

 

The first New Year's Eve of their married life, he finally let go of his guilt and regrets. It wasn’t easy. Over the years they’d bitten like hooks into his heart, deeper and deeper. Potter listened and didn’t flinch, even at the worst parts. He’d done terrible things too, Potter said. War did that to people. Then Potter kissed him and sucked out the hooks, the shrapnel, the Unforgiveables as though they were poison in a wound. He lacked the words of gratitude he would otherwise have spoken, but Potter understood anyway. To be bonded was never to be alone again. 

 

For every New Year's Eve for the rest of their lives, they fell asleep curled around each other’s body and missed the bell clonging the way out of the old year and into the new. Arbitrary dates no longer represented the terror and hope of life and death. Love smoothed away the lines between things – between months and seasons. Between years and decades. Between one soul and another. Mornings might be cold or mild. Rainy or bright. It didn’t matter. They were content with the knowledge that all of their lives had been a dress rehearsal for this one singular moment.


End file.
